Donald Trump and maga Republicans must eliminate Immigration and Customs ICE evil operations

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski says
Homeland Security secretary should resign amid rising calls for her firing or impeachment by Lisa Mascaro for AP published in the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska.

WASHINGTON, DC— A groundswell of voices have come to the same conclusion: Kristi Noem must go.

From Democratic Party leaders to the nation’s leading advocacy organizations to even the most centrist lawmakers in Congress, the calls are mounting for the Homeland Security secretary to step aside after the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two people who protested deportation policy.

At a defining moment in her tenure, few Republicans are rising to Noem’s defense.

Noem “has, through her words, and I think in her actions — she’s taken a direction that has not been helpful to the situation, and I don’t think that it helps the country," said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

“I think you have a secretary right now that needs to be accountable to the chaos and in some of the tragedy that we have seen,” Murkowski added. “... I voted for her. I think the president needs to look at who he has in place as a secretary of Homeland Security. I would not support her again and I think it probably is time for her to step down.”

Top House Democratic Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California said in a joint statement that “the country is disgusted by what the Department of Homeland Security has done.”

“Kristi Noem should be fired immediately,” the Democrats said, “or we will commence impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.”

Republicans and Democrats call for Noem to step down❗

What started as sharp criticism of the Homeland Security secretary, and a longshot move by Democratic lawmakers signing onto impeachment legislation in the Republican-controlled House, has morphed into an inflection point for Noem, who has been the high-profile face of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement regime.

Noem’s brash leadership style and remarks in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of Alex Pretti, R.N., and Renee Good — in which she suggested Pretti “attacked” officers and portrayed the events leading up to Good’s shooting an “act of domestic terrorism” — have been seen as doing irreparable damage, as events on the ground disputed her account.

Her alliance with Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who was recalled from the Minnesota operation Monday as border czar Tom Homan took the lead, has left her isolated on Capitol Hill.

“What she’s done in Minnesota should be disqualifying. She should be out of a job,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.

But Donald Trump stands by Noem and praises her work

President Donald Trump defended Noem at multiple junctures, strongly indicating her job does not appear to be in immediate jeopardy.

Asked by reporters as he left the White House on Tuesday for a trip to Iowa whether Noem is going to step down, Trump had a one-word answer: “No.”

Pressed later during an interview on Fox (Fake❗) News if he had confidence in Noem, the president said, “I do.”🙄

“Who closed up the border? She did,” Trump said, “with Tom Homan, with the whole group. I mean, they’ve closed up the border. The border is a tremendous success.”

As Democrats in Congress threaten to shut down the government as they demand restrictions on Trump’s mass deportation agenda, Noem’s future at the department faces serious questions and concerns.

The Republican leadership of the House and Senate committees that oversee Homeland Security have demanded that department officials appear before their panels to answer for the operations that have stunned the nation with their sheer force — including images of children, including a 5-year-old, being plucked from families.

“Obviously this is an inflection point and an opportunity to evaluate and to really assess the policies and procedures and how they are being implemented and put into practice,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, where Noem had been the state’s House representative and governor before joining the administration.

Asked about his own confidence in Noem’s leadership, Thune said, “That’s the president’s judgment call to make.”

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called Noem a “liar” and said she must be fired.

Fighting about DHS funding

Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that DHS enforces the laws from Congress, and if lawmakers don’t like those laws, they should change them.

“Too many politicians would rather defend criminals and attack the men and women who are enforcing our laws,” McLaughlin said. “It’s time they focus on protecting the American people, the work this Department is doing every day under Secretary Noem’s leadership.”

The ability of Congress to restrict Homeland Security funding is limited, in large part because the GOP majority already essentially doubled department funding under Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts law.

Instead, Democrats are seeking to impose restraints on Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations as part of a routine annual funding package for Homeland, Defense, Health and other departments. Without action this week, those agencies would head toward a shutdown.

To be sure, Homeland Security still has strong defenders in the Congress.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus said Tuesday in a letter to Trump that he should invoke the Insurrection Act, if needed, to quell protests. The group said it would be “ready to take all steps necessary” to keep funds flowing for Trump’s immigration enforcement and removal operations.

On the job for a year, Noem has clashed at times with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, as Republicans and Democrats have sought greater oversight and accounting of the department’s spending and operations.

Noem has kept a low profile since the Saturday press conference following Pretti’s death, though she appeared Sunday on Fox (Fake❗) News.

She doubled down in that interview on criticism of Minnesota officials, but also expressed compassion for Pretti’s family.

“It grieves me to think about what his family is going through but it also grieves me what’s happening to these law enforcement officers every day out in the streets with the violence they face,” she said.
Once rare, impeachments now more common

Impeachment, once a far-flung tool brandished against administration officials, has become increasingly commonplace.

Two years ago, the Republican-led House impeached another Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, in protest over the then-Biden administration’s border security and immigration policies that allowed millions of immigrants and asylum seekers to enter the U.S. The Senate dismissed the charges.

Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said if the Republican chairman of the panel, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, does not launch an impeachment probe, he would.

Raskin said he would work with the top Democrats on the Homeland Security and Oversight committees to immediately launch an impeachment inquiry related to the Minnesota deaths and other “lawlessness and corruption that may involve treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

More than 160 House Democrats have signed on to an impeachment resolution from Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill.

Anchorage Daily News staff along with Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana, Kevin Freking and Joey Cappelletti contributed to this story.

Vice President Kamala Harris provides stability critical to President Biden's re-election

Echo opinion published in the Washington Post (Democracy dies in darkness) by Karen Tumulty associate editor and columnist:

NEW ORLEANS — The annual Essence Festival of Culture has grown into the country’s largest annual celebration of Black talent and influence. This year, members of the Congressional Black Caucus were there to deliver a message about the fragile moment in which President Biden and the Democratic Party find themselves.

“People are talking about ‘Biden is too old’ — hell, I’m older than Biden,” 85-year-old Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said, bringing a standing ovation. “No matter what anybody says, it ain’t going to be no other Democratic candidate. It’s going to be Biden, and you better vote!”

The congresswoman’s bluntness made it all the more noticeable that the next speaker on the program — Vice President Harris — went nowhere near the subject that is preoccupying the political world.

Harris mentioned the president only once, even as she argued for his achievements and the urgency of his reelection against an opponent who intends to “weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, who has talked about being proud of taking from the women of America a most fundamental right to make decisions about your own body.”

Displaying chops developed in her years as a prosecutor, the vice president pressed the case against Donald Trump more powerfully than Biden himself has been able to do lately.

Therein lies the delicacy of her situation. Should Biden step aside, something he has vowed not to do, putting Harris at the top of the ticket presents the quickest and most logical way for Democrats to regroup. Some polling also suggests she might fare slightly better against Trump, which is why his campaign is already organizing a full-scale assault against her.

Biden doomsday scenarios are everywhere, except in the vicinity of Harris. She has been the most loyal — and effective — of Biden’s allies in this fight. In a combative interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper just minutes after the debate, she didn’t cede a millimeter: “I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last 3½ years of performance.”

That line, which Harris delivered extemporaneously, has since become the backbone of the Biden campaign’s talking points.


Through most of the past three-plus years, though, Harris herself was kept backstage. She was handed impossible assignments like tackling the root causes of migration in an administration that showed no interest in doing anything about the border.

Air Force Two touched down in New Orleans on Friday night just moments after the broadcast of Biden’s prime-time interview on ABC. That interview did little to stop the fallout from his disastrous debate performance. As the vice president emerged from the plane, she was caught in a downpour, punctuated by thunder and lightning. I wondered: Was this a random weather event or an omen?

President Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris

It was not until the overturn of Roe v. Wade that the White House recognized her value as its messenger on the suddenly salient issue of abortion — a word that Biden still has trouble bringing himself to mention. Harris’s travel schedule accelerated dramatically. This year so far, she has gone on the road more than 60 times by her staff’s count.

When Biden picked Harris as his history-making running mate in 2020, the first Black woman ever to share a major party ticket, the two knew each other primarily as adversaries. The California senator’s own campaign for that year’s Democratic nomination had started with promise but collapsed before the first votes were cast in Iowa. She was overly cautious, too deliberate, brimming with policy proposals that never quite added up to a rationale for her candidacy.

Given Biden’s age, Harris was always going to be an issue in this campaign. During the Republican primary, it was a rare appearance at which Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, would not declare: “A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris.”

Conservative commentators mock her laugh. Trump mispronounces her first name. And in a recently surfaced video, he called her “pathetic” and “so f---ing bad.” (Maine Writer - WOW❗😮 the Biden campaign should latch on to that evil venom and turn it around....IOW "Trump is so f----ing bad❗)

But watching her over the weekend, I saw an assurance that was absent when Harris was running in her own right four years ago. Were she to do it again, now or in 2028, I’d bet she would be harder to caricature, less easy to demonize than Republicans believe.

Harris concluded her appearance here with a message to the younger women in the audience.

“You are on many occasions in your life going to be in a room [where] you will be the only one that looks like you or has had your life experience,” Harris said. “And what I demand of you is that you always walk into those rooms with your chin up and your shoulders back.”

“I will beseech you: Don’t you ever hear something can’t be done. People in your life will tell you, ‘Oh, it’s not your time. It’s not your turn. Nobody like you has done it before,’” she added. “Don’t you ever listen to that. I like to say, ‘I eat “no” for breakfast. I don’t hear “no.” ’ ”

This may or may not be Kamala Harris’s own time. But if the call comes, we know what her answer will be.